Life Science log

Most important weekly life sciences news headlines

More red meat consumption appears to be associated with increased risk of death

Eating too much red meat may well be a bad move, but it's the knock-on effects of such research I worry aboutThe news that eating a lot of red meat regularly is bad for you in the long term is not exactly news; yet the recent announcement of a study by the Harvard School of Medicine, in which the health and diets of over 120,000 healthcare professionals were tracked over 28 years, seems to have made a bigger noise than usual.True, the figures look scary: adding a single portion of red meat to one's daily diet, they say, increases the risk of dying by 13%. Make that processed red meat - bacon, say - and the figure rises to 20%.Of course, the typical response to this is coloured by an understandable innumeracy. We are not, in the digested reports, being given the figures behind these percentages; so while the extremely casual reader may erroneously take away the information that eating a portion of bacon a day gives you a one in five chance of dying that very day, the reality is rather less alarming. It means t